Friday, April 25, 2014

A few months ago, one of my students interviewed me for her Sociology of Family class. I answered her questions in an e-mail. I checked with Tina, my wife, to see if she thought this is an accurate portrayal of what we do. She does think this correctly captures our life. Here is the interview:

1. Describe a typical 24-hour day in your life during a
week and a typical 24 hour day on a weekend.

Weekdays are
hectic. We get up between 6:00 and 6:45. Tina (my wife) and I get ready
for work, and we share in the work of getting the kids dressed, making them
breakfast, cleaning up after them, packing lunch. Tina usually takes Mack (3
year old) to day care and I usually get Troy (6 year old) on the bus. Our kids
don't sleep in, so the weekend is get up early (6:00-6:45) and do stuff all day
long as a family. This winter has been long and boring -- we spend way too much
time inside, and spend too much time watching TV. But when it's warm we're all
out together, the kids ride bikes and scooters and play soccer and run around.
And we spend a lot of time at playgrounds and meeting up with friends who have
kids. We hang out from sun up to sun down!!!

2. Who stays home with an ill child and who makes and
keeps dental and medical appointments?

We are SO VERY LUCKY that our kids are in good health. Tina is more likely to stay home with a
sick kid when it happens, and there are times I do it too. We are also very
lucky to have several family members to pitch in. Both of our parents help on a
regular basis. And so there are times when Tina's parents or my parents will watch a
sick kid so that Tina and I don't have to take off from work. Tina is highly
organized -- usually makes the appointments but we share in the work of who
takes the kids to the dentist and doctor. Most of the time we actually go
together. We've probably been to at least 100 appointments together over the
years (probably more, no exaggeration) -- the doctor, immediate care, etc.

3. Who takes and picks up the children from school, who
buys the groceries, services the car?

I am the grocery store champion. I do most of the grocery
shopping and most of the cooking. I spend a good portion of my life at the
grocery store. That is sad but true!!!! "Servicing the car" basically
comes down to oil changes -- I usually take the car for oil changes. I am not
"Mr. Fix It" as they say. Luckily my father-in-law is "Mr. Fix It" and he helps us a ton (and in the process, saves us $$$$). I am close to worthless in terms of fixing
things around the house or fixing the car. But I'm very good with other things
that need to get done. For example, I currently am doing Mack's laundry and
gave him a bath about an hour ago. Tina almost always picks up Mack from
daycare. Troy takes the bus to and from school -- there are days I get him off
the bus, and there are days when my mother-in-law gets him off the bus. We're a
family operation. There are a lot of people who pitch in!!

4. What type of childcare does your family have, and how
was it selected?

Mack goes to daycare three days a week -- Tina played the major role in selecting the daycare. She did a lot of research before we selected the daycare. My in-laws watch Mack one day a week and my
parents watch Mack one day a week. So it's great to have family involved and
that he doesn't have to do 5 days in daycare. It also saves money, of course.
I'll say it again, we are very lucky. Troy is in first grade so he's in school
all day. I used to stay home one weekday every week until this school year
actually. So I was home one day a week for the first years of Troy's life and
the first few years of Mack's life. Tina was able to take significant maternity
leave when both of the kids were born, so she got to spend several months with
them as babies before she returned to work. We're all home together in the
summer. Tina works at a school so she's home in July and August and I'm home in
summer too. So we're one mostly happy family in the summer months.

5. What activities are the children involved in after
school, and who gets them to these activities?

Throughout the year Troy does soccer and baseball, and
he's doing floor hockey now. Mack is doing soccer for the first time. We limit
it to one activity at a time. We try not to overdo it. We all go together. We
have fun with it. Mack's been watching Troy for years, now he finally has a
turn to do something for himself. We all go as a family as much as possible.

So we're a good team unit -- I consider us an
"egalitarian" marriage in how we share the work (to use sociology
lingo!). I don't know if there's such a thing as 50-50 but I think Tina and I
share the work pretty equally. I like to say we're both doing stuff constantly,
all the time. Tina does a lot of stuff that I don't do: sends cards to friends
and family for key occasions, makes plans so we have a social life, buys gifts
for birthday parties for relatives, decorates the house, does a lot of
gardening, does a lot of the cleaning. I do cleaning too, but she does more.
She teases me that I don't dust, and she's right about that! We split up a lot
of household tasks like ironing, putting laundry away, etc.

Friday, April 11, 2014

It's finally baseball season! Matt Loveland, a sociologist at Le Moyne College, is passionate about baseball. If you follow him on Twitter, you'll see him occasionally tweeting about baseball. I wanted to get his take on a few baseball matters. He generously agreed to an interview.

I'm making a prediction: instant replay in MLB is going to make little or no difference beyond slowing down game.
— Matt Loveland (@mtloveland) March 30, 2014

So, you get to slow down the game to decide if you're going to challenge? And then not do the replay? Nothing is certain! #modernity#mlb
— Matt Loveland (@mtloveland) March 31, 2014

Todd Schoepflin: So, Matt, I gather from some of your tweets that you’re not in love with instant replay in MLB. Why not?

Matt Loveland: I'm actually a little bit conflicted. Mostly I think it's unnecessary and going to do little more than lengthen games by bringing managers out to question calls they'd previously just have been upset about and fumed in the dugout. I know umpires get calls wrong, but do they get enough wrong to justify these stoppages? Mostly what I've seen so far is managers coming out just to give his assistant enough time to see the replay, and then when it's clear the call was right, going back to the dugout. I know there have been successful challenges, but will replay guarantee they get all the calls right? I'd guess it'll mean less than perfect improvement of a percentage of correct calls that was already high to begin with (I also imagine these data are available or have been written about). I really liked the NY Times piece by Brayden King and Jerry Kim. I don't think fans really appreciate the warts like they ask, but I don't think getting rid of the warts will make the game appreciably better, at least in terms of casual enjoyment as a fan.

How am I conflicted, you ask? As a fan of the Brewers, if replay helps Milwaukee by correcting bad calls that's great (it already has), but as a fan who also just likes to watch random games, I really don't care for the added delays and confusion. Maybe that'll get worked out. More as a sociologist, I guess, I just get annoyed that we sometimes sacrifice what can be a fun pastime for the sake of legalistic certainty. It's the downside of rationalization - it kills the opportunities for spontaneous emotion. At the same time, maybe it'll cut down on managers yelling and screaming and getting ejected which seems like a good thing. But, we all know that's fun to watch...

TS: Speaking of conflicted, I’d like to get your thoughts about watching baseball in the performance enhancing substance era. When you watch games, does it enter your mind that some of the players are cheating, that the playing field isn’t level? Is this something you care a lot about? If so, what do you do with those concerns—do you just put them away when you consume the game?

ML: This is something that I feel like I should care about. I really don’t. In particular, I’m a Brewers fan and the team’s star player Ryan Braun got caught with elevated testosterone levels. It was a lot of drama because he said he was innocent, he won an appeal of suspension with MLB, and then his name showed up on paperwork indicating he’d used the services of Biogenesis – a PED clinic. I don’t care that he used the PEDs, at least not that much, but I do care that I got duped because I believed him. And then I care because why should I care about that, and it just makes it harder to justify being a sports fan, and that makes me sad because I want to have fun enjoying sports. And, why can’t I just enjoy it!?

TS: Do you agree that baseball has been eclipsed by football as America's national pastime? Is it too obvious to say that baseball is just too slow moving for our culture whereas football is fast, hypermasculine, and hyperviolent, therefore more reflective of American culture and more entertaining for consumers? As an aside, we know most of an NFL or college football telecast is commercials and pauses in between plays. In a three hour telecast you mostly get commercials and announcer blabber, but the plays happen fast and in violent bursts.

ML: I really don’t know about that question. I think the answer depends a lot on the data, and I don’t know which data are right. I know national TV ratings and average attendance overwhelmingly go to football all the time, and it does appear to have the more wildly committed fans. That being said, I also think that baseball is able to put on a lot more games every year. There are only 8 home games a year in the NFL and for several of the teams by the end of the season it’s hard to find fans in the stands. MLB teams have 81 home games a year, and sure there are places like Miami that seem to have real trouble filling the stands all year, but I think that’s the exception. And then you’ve got to consider all the other levels of professional and semi-professional baseball that go on every year. Put on a baseball game and people will come, Todd. People will most definitely come. Other football leagues have never really been as successful as the other baseball leagues. Mostly this question just makes me think of Carlin.

TS: I know you're a fan of minor league baseball and enjoy going to AAA games. What do you like and appreciate about the minor league baseball experience?

ML: I prefer the experience of minor league games over the big league games. Don’t get me wrong, big league play is better, and I love the feeling of a big crowd at an MLB game. It’s nice to be a part of that many people all focused on the same thing and reacting to the exciting plays. Then again, there is something special about being committed to a minor league team. I was at a Syracuse Chiefs game once, it was early in the year and it was cold and rainy. I got talking to an usher who’d worked at the stadium for many years, and still does, and he commented about liking the small crowds because it felt like they were playing the game ‘just for us.’ There is something to that. I think it’s an identity issue as much as about liking baseball. I do like the game, but I like being a fan too, and when you are a fan of something most folks aren’t, I think that’s a nice feeling. You also get the opportunity to say ‘I saw him when…’ once a player makes it up to ‘the show,’ and that’s fun. As a result of following teams like the South Bend Silverhawks and Syracuse Chiefs as closely as I have for the last 15 years or so, there’s a good number of big league players I saw ‘back in the day.’

There is also the fact that I just like having access to a game. That’s three hours that I don’t really think or worry about much else. You don’t even really have to pay total attention. Just sit there, enjoy a beverage or two, and hang out with friends. It’s a great venue for that, and in a way I don’t think football can match. Downtime in a football game really feels like downtime, and when you are in the stands for a televised game you really notice it. Football games have terrible flow, and the TV timeout has to be the worst fan experience there is. This sort of returns to the issue of replay, because what it’s doing is creating new downtime, an artificial disruption, that doesn’t fit the flow of the game.The End (or perhaps to be continued, after Matt and I get together this summer to watch a minor league baseball game in Buffalo!)

Friday, April 4, 2014

5:00 p.m. you walk into a near empty restaurant for takeout. You ask the bartender "How long will it be?" and she replies "Long enough to have a drink." Sounds good to take a break from your everyday so you ask for a beer and life is good. Upon your first sip you notice the guy to your left is drunk as a skunk. Here he comes. You've been in this scene before. So many times an extra drunk person has interrupted your space and talked in your face. It's happened so many times that you have a skill for how to respond. As usual, you play nice, even when he asks to put on your glasses. You indulge him and he is pleased with the opportunity to try on your glasses. He seals your approval by saying "You're cool bro." You've passed his drunken test. Now you're in the clear.

The drunk turns to his left and chips away at someone who appears to be a friend. He begs the man to go to one more bar for one more drink. "Please, please. Just one drink." The man protests again and again: "But I'm married." The drunk man persists and finally convinces the married man to go to another bar. They head for the exit. Your food is ready so you grab your bag and pat the drunk man on the shoulder as you walk past them. You say "Have a good night, gentlemen." You open the door to parking lot sunshine. Head up, you walk to your car with a confident feeling. You buzz home and move on with your life.